PROFESSOR ELMSL1E.* lrr more ways than one this volume is

full of interest. Dr. Robertson Nicoll has outlined the personal career of the Professor of Hebrew for his pupils, and of the Presbyterian minister for his disciples, whether directly or indirectly under his charge ; but, in supplying them with an admirable selection of memorable words, has given a wider public the opportunity of making acquaintance with the thoughtful life of an original religious mind. The value of the portrait—for it should be valuable to those working for and with others in the spiritual struggles of the age—lies in the inspiration it should give to young thinkers in the Christian Church. In these selections we have little that is not truly catholic in spirit. We do not mean that Professor Elmslie's papers are in any way of classic rank, but we do mean that they tell us of those serene depths over which roll the waves of this troublesome world, powerless to affect their calm. In his last illness, his unconscious brain recurred to "what had been the master-thought of his life. Lifting his hand, he would say with great earnestness : No man can deny that I always preached the love of God.' " (p. 60.) But the third reason for interest in this volume seems to contradict the second. It only seems to do so. Both as a record of calm love and as the story of conquering faith, it is the tale of a young teacher of our own days. It is entirely actuel,—there is no English word for the phrase. Professor Elmslie was only forty-one when last year he died in the midst of usefulness, at the age when he had in youth thought men might begin to teach.

Typical in many ways of Scotland, William Gray Elmslie was the child of her schools and of her University system. Persevering and brilliant, as we are told, humble, but "with the humility which is very consistent with strenuous effort and even great ambition," he worked his way upward to attain his influential position in an ever-widening circle of interests. In 1880 he was appointed tutor, in 1883 elected Professor of Hebrew, in the Presbyterian College, London ; but we leave on one side (as in some ways of lesser interest to general readers) his work as congregational and mission preacher, organiser, publisher's reader, reviewer, and even his Hebrew scholarship, for the sake of devoting our brief space to the examination of a character by no means invented by his biographer. The man existed, and his friends would say that there is under- narration rather than exaggeration in the sketch of one gifted for friendship ; persuasive, generous, charitable, though shrewd, fertile in resource, individual in action, and (perhaps with recollection of his own inaccessibility to sermons) only able to teach "what had possessed his own soul "; but to teach that as one who had comprehensive insight and therefore spoke with authority. Sooner or later, had he lived, he must have decisively clashed with the more crystallised minds of his own communion, and have learnt by progressive experiences, as all genuine teachers of their generation have had to learn, that the new wine requires for safety the skins un- used before ? Our Lord recognised the limits of receptivity

• Pro/suer W. G. Binuhe, D.D. : Memoirs and Sermons. Edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, M.A., LLD., and by A. N. Nicoll. London: Hodder issui Stoughton. 1E00.

in that saying which we fear to call shrewd and humorous, though we know it is the outcome of the perfect tolerance of perfect penetration ; penetrative insight being tender when a gift of the good, and harsh as a power with the evil, amongst men and women who in any degree can read the minds of others. The young teacher is welcomed until it is found that in " fulfilling " men's theories he destroys their traditions. Take these sayings, not unsaid before, doubtless, and certainly most frequently thought, but surely significant in the mouth of one whose " following " was on the increase in at least Nonconformist circles :—

[If the Bible should have an undue place given to it], he declares, "once again, be sure of it, God will create a true, lawful, and blessed recoil, and you will have these sacred things even dashed down to a position of undue depreciation. It is God's way of leading us to Himself." (p. 174.)

"Is it the great thing to get the name of God spelt with its three letters, or to be shown God P" (p. 195.)

"Whenever you hear the accents of Christ's human voice ringing out in any way of genuine love and tenderness, whenever you see a heart or a soul follow the light, however dim and glimmering, understand that you are touching Christ, and stand on a bit of the kingdom of heaven." (p. 193.) "Take plenty of spiritual exercise," he says, with firm grasp on the point of vitality, "and you may be sure that even a bare and poor spiritual diet will agree wonderfully with you."

There is much to note,—though in the voluntary and in- voluntary limits, bareness and reticence of the narrative, perhaps only the sympathetic could grasp its significance— in such a mental process of development brought to a "sudden ripeness" only by death. Development never occurs without temporary loss and occasional pain : the fords of the new life are guarded by those who will not let the coward pass, and every personal advance is gained by personal sub- mission to new discipline, though in the service which is perfect freedom. Yet, as in the stories of old, the defeated adversaries part with their weapons to the victor :—

"Curious," says Professor Elmslie in his diary, in regard to a remark made about the reality of his teaching," that in my sermons tells with everybody, for it comes from my line of reading and thinking at college, especially from the German books on Christ, —such as Strauss; they made me trust Him as a Person rather than as a doctrine ; besides, I know I have come to regard Him all round differently in consequence. I have had to pay dearly for the reading, and have often wished I had not, so it is a little comfort to find that my coming through it makes me more helpful now."

"His schemes were numerous," says the editor, "but the chief was to write a book which should make the Old Testament intelligible—its contents and message—to the common people."

Again, "On the Gradations of Doubt," it is asserted :— " Good men in those old times found it as hard to believe in 'God and goodness as we do, and they got just as little, or just as much, supernatural help as we do." (p. 175.) Again, "The Hymn of Heartsease" is a series of popular papers for a popular magazine, but still full of the personal characteristics of the writer,—a man of plain living and high thinking, which had its outcome in the simple speech, :meaning much or little, according to its auditor's capacity. "The Story of Dorcas," too, as other papers, will show the outgoing side of the teacher's efforts, and may prove what we have said about his direction being essentially of our own time,—full of the desire for practical efforts for others. Of course no one could deny our difficulties and our failures; but, besides all the positive evils and indefinite doubts of our days, there are many other characteristics, and, if we will think so, many more marked and unique characteristics. We stand—all know it—on the edge of a reconstructive age of faith. We stand—many feel it—in the midst of a new revelation of love. What we have said of personal applies to historical advance. It is a commonplace. Perhaps we are waiting for a new Prophet in whose life the contemporary but still chaotic thoughts of our era shall culminate.

It is inevitable that Literature, interpreted constantly for the public by teachers little ahead of their classes, should suffer from its " commonness " with those of the public who are ahead of the official teachers, just as certain minds do not care to look at the originals of fine statues, because they have too frequently seen inartistic copies. Pseudo-familiarity is a real obstacle to appreciation ; but it is one which does not exist for great minds dealing with great subjects, and our young teachers begin to see that it were well to recognise it as a preventable hindrance to many in the literature of religion. But (to use a paradoxical phrase, that is, however, based on

current experience) the water minds of popular appreciators, in consequence of this inability to realise the practical help- fulness of "the goodly fellowship of the Prophets," seek a revelation anywhere else than in what is called "revealed religion."

But is the following the key to part of their dissatisfaction ?

The papers of Professor Elmslie on "The Making of a Prophet" and the "Example of the Prophets" are worth

thinking out,—as we have said, chiefly because written by a special student for a general circle of readers :— "And so the prophet's office was never hereditary; they were always selected And I venture to say that in the Church's story there has been a succession of men who have done what was the work of the priest in the old time, and there has been a succession of men who have done the work of the prophet. You need both ; you need the priest, to keep alive, as it were, the ordinary level of religion, to preserve some sort of uniformity; and in the Church's story, you will find that God has raised up prophets, men who sometimes broke loose, who were not always true, who sometimes mistook God's meaning, who had but little of the character of the old prophets, and yet who taught and adapted the old ecclesiastical doctrines to the new necessities, suiting their work to the age ; and though disbelieved and openly denounced in their own day, they have become our teachers since."

It is impossible by extracts to give an idea of the impression of strength made upon one by what are, after all, only popular sermons and surface-papers ; but we think some will thank us for calling attention to what we point to as typical of a young teaching spirit of our own time in its sensitive perceptiveness and practical administrative activity. Life after life is falling under the fascination of work for others that drives them back to demand, as they believe to get, strength not their own. If

we knew it (for we do not shut our eyes to the Sadducean and the sensualist teachings of the luxurious and undisciplined) does not many a one learn to know God in the unselfish pain of aid to other lives ?—has there not been in this century a revelation of the true meaning of Christian love?